The Biotechnology Unit is responsible for the production and purification of biological material. The Unit undertakes a wide array of biological production tasks such as large scale growth of prokaryotes and eucaryotes, and production and purification of biological compounds especially proteins. These products, not available from commercial sources, are needed for clinical and structural studies. The Biotechnology Unit is capable of handling these various production tasks by implementing both physiological and technical approaches. Efficient process development and production is possible since the Unit possesses two integrated elements: a fully operational multi purpose pilot production facility and the capability of conducting research and process development. During the last year the unit performed approximately 200 different, large scale preparations including: 1) growing various microorganisms such as recombinant Escherichia coli, recombinant Pichia pastoris, mutant strains of Corynebacteria diphtheria, several types of Salmonella and Shigella, Staphylococcus strains and mutant strain of Bacillus anthracis; 2) propagating large volumes of various eucaryotic cells such as HeLa, CHO, HEK 293, drosophila, Sf 9 and hi five; 3) purifying gram quantities of recombinant Pseudomonas aeruginosa exotoxin A, protective antigen from Bacillus anthracis, Staphylococcal enterotoxin type C, experimental transmission blocking vaccine for malaria, Chlostridium difficile toxin A, recombinant adiponectin and several antibodies from hybridoma cultures and rabbit serum. On the research and development arena, the unit conducted work in the following topics: 1) Continued the development of more efficient methods for large scale protein recovery, work was done on implementing expanded bed adsorption techniques for capturing proteins on ion exchangers and hydrophobic resins, utilizing new types of expanded column: this column does not have flow adaptors and screens and therefore can handle larger concentration of biomass at higher low rates; 2) continued its research aimed at understanding the glucose metabolism of various recombinant E. coli strains in an effort to find out why certain strains are more suitable for foreign protein production using microarrays technology and protein analysis; 3) developing fermentation and purification procedure for expressing recombinant adiponectin from HEK 293 cells; 4) continued its research project associated with mammalian cells aiming at understanding the genetic difference between cells that can grow in suspension, and cells that are anchorage dependent. 5) Continued its research work on the production process of recombinant proteins from the HeLa/vaccinia system, 6) In collaboration with LDMI, NICHD, the unit conducted work on the development of new vaccine against Shigella flexneri and Bacillus anthracis, the products are currently in clinical trials.7) the unit started another research and development project, this one is associated with production of recombinant proteins from filamentous fungi.